Release Date: 7/22/2011
Captain America: The First Avenger, directed by Joe Johnston (The Wolfman, Jumanji) is an action-adventure superhero film. This comic book adaption serves as another origin story in a year packed with them. This time it follows Steve Rogers who eventually becomes the first Avenger. The film started out great and with popcorn in hand I was ready for the best superhero flick of the summer, but as the story progressed it became more and more of a cheesefest. It lacked the great action a summer blockbuster usually needs and with only a few decent performances it falls along the lines of Thor, as a middle-of-the-road superhero yarn.
It is 1942, America has entered World War II, and sickly but determined Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is frustrated at being rejected yet again for military service. Everything changes when Dr. Erksine (Stanley Tucci) recruits him for the secret Project Rebirth. Proving his extraordinary bravery, intelligence and principles, Rogers undergoes the experiment and his weak body is suddenly enhanced into beefcake status. In the meantime Johann Schmidt aka the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) creates a super weapon as a part of the secret HYDRA research department and has plans to start a war of his own. Rogers is initially misused as a propaganda mascot. However, when his comrades need him, he goes on a successful adventure that truly makes him Captain America and his war against Schmidt begins.
The first act is done to near perfection. It reminds you of the great Indiana Jones series in the beginning as it takes place during WWII and you get a great old school feel from it, especially from the baddie Red Skull who does what he can with a terribly written part. You get a sense from the start that this movie is going to be full of camp, and camp is usually acceptable in superhero films, to an extent. After the great build-up and transformation of Evans from a skinny looking turd to his real size (which was some amazing looking effects by the way), the movie becomes extremely cheesy filled with one-liner after one-liner, if there was one more fondue joke I was going to puke. The action scenes were kind of weak too, sometimes only even happening in a montage. They usually consisted with Captain America running really fast or throwing his shield at people, not really anything overly exciting.
The comedy in this film was a nice surprise though. Stanley Tucci’s over-the-top performance with his silly German accent was really fun to watch. He is an actor’s actor and is usually solid in anything he appears in. Tommy Lee Jones also steals a handful of scenes and is pretty hilarious at parts. He had me laughing out loud a handful of times and that wasn’t expected with this kind of film, even though Iron Man 1 and 2 were also pretty funny. The love interest played by Hayley Atwell was also run of the mill and her performance was nothing to be desired. Chris Evans’ Captain America portrayal was kind of underwhelming as well. He usually shows a great flair in his performances represented by his charm on screen. This is a very different approach for him, as he was kind of restrained the entire film but I guess that’s just what the director wanted.
Overall, the Captain was a great first act and a very solid ending scene, the middle is where it loses steam. Like most of the other mediocre superhero flicks of the past couple years it serves more as a decent setup rather than a great film on its own. It’s acceptable as summer entertainment, if it came out during Oscar season it probably would have been close to getting whacked. It definitely has some redeeming qualities but you might come out of the theater feeling a little unfulfilled.
Movie Wiseguys: 7.0/10